Real-Time Monitoring: Understanding Your Streaming Dashboard

Dashboard Overview

The streaming dashboard is your command center for monitoring every aspect of your streaming server in real time. It provides a consolidated view of all active streams, system resources, viewer counts, and health indicators — everything you need to ensure your streams are running smoothly and to quickly identify and resolve issues before they affect viewers.

The dashboard is designed for operators who need to monitor dozens or hundreds of streams simultaneously. Every metric updates automatically without requiring manual page refreshes, giving you a live view of your entire streaming operation at a glance.

Real-Time Statistics

The dashboard header displays four key system-wide statistics that give you an immediate overview of your server's status:

• Total Streams: The total number of configured streams on your server, including both active and stopped streams
• Active Streams: The number of streams currently running and delivering content to viewers
• RTMP Connections: The number of active RTMP ingest connections from encoders like OBS, Wirecast, or vMix
• Radio Stations: The number of active audio-only streams (Shoutcast/Icecast compatible)

These counters update in real time, so you always know the current state of your server without navigating to individual stream pages.

Refresh Rates

Different metrics update at different intervals to balance real-time accuracy with server performance:

• Bandwidth statistics: Updated every 2 seconds — provides near-real-time bandwidth monitoring for detecting spikes and anomalies
• Stream statistics: Updated every 5 seconds — includes viewer counts, bitrate, resolution, and health status for each stream

These intervals are optimized to provide responsive monitoring without creating excessive load on the server. For most operations, the 2-5 second update cycle is sufficient to detect and respond to issues before they impact the viewer experience.

Per-Stream Statistics

Each stream on your server displays a detailed set of metrics that help you assess its health and performance:

• Running Time: How long the stream has been active since it was last started
• Bitrate (Mbps): The current output bitrate of the stream — useful for detecting encoding issues or source problems
• Viewer Count: The number of concurrent viewers currently watching the stream
• Resolution: The output video resolution (e.g., 1920x1080, 1280x720)
• Video Codec: The video codec being used (typically H.264)
• FPS: Frames per second — drops below the target FPS indicate encoding or source issues
• Audio Codec: The audio codec (typically AAC)
• CPU Usage (%): The percentage of CPU resources this individual stream is consuming
• Memory Usage: The amount of RAM this stream's process is using
• Health Indicator: A color-coded status showing the overall health of the stream

Stream Status Indicators

Every stream displays one of four status indicators:

• Running: The stream is active and delivering content normally. This is the expected state for all operational streams.
• Stopped: The stream has been manually stopped or has not been started. No resources are being consumed.
• Error: The stream has encountered a problem — the source may be unreachable, the encoder may have disconnected, or a configuration issue is preventing the stream from running. Check the stream logs for details.
• Starting: The stream is in the process of initializing. This state typically lasts a few seconds as the server connects to the source and begins processing.

CPU Monitoring

CPU usage is one of the most important metrics for streaming server health. Each transcoding stream consumes CPU resources proportional to the output quality. The dashboard highlights streams that exceed 90% CPU usage with a warning indicator, as sustained high CPU usage can lead to dropped frames, increased latency, and degraded output quality.

When you see CPU warnings, consider switching high-load streams to passthrough mode if the source quality is acceptable, or upgrading to a server with more CPU cores. For operations with many transcoding streams, planning server capacity in advance prevents performance degradation.

Memory Usage Per Stream

Each stream process consumes between 100 MB and 500 MB of RAM depending on the transcoding quality, input resolution, and buffer settings. Passthrough streams use the least memory (typically 100-150 MB), while 4K transcoding streams can use 400-500 MB or more. Monitor total memory usage to ensure your server has sufficient RAM for all concurrent streams plus operating system overhead.

A general rule of thumb: allocate 512 MB of RAM per transcoding stream and 256 MB per passthrough stream, plus 2 GB for the operating system and management interface.

Bandwidth Monitoring

The bandwidth monitor shows both inbound (from sources) and outbound (to viewers and restream destinations) bandwidth in real time. This is critical for ensuring you do not exceed your server's network capacity. For detailed bandwidth planning and calculations, see our bandwidth calculator guide.

System Uptime Tracking

The dashboard displays server uptime — the time since the streaming server process was last started. This helps you track stability and identify unexpected restarts. A healthy server should show continuous uptime measured in days or weeks, not hours. Frequent restarts may indicate memory leaks, configuration problems, or external factors affecting the server.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The dashboard supports keyboard shortcuts for fast navigation and common actions. These are especially useful for operators managing large numbers of streams:

• 1 — Switch to Dashboard view
• 2 — Switch to Live Streams view
• N — Create New Stream
• R — Refresh all data
• Space — Play/Pause the selected stream preview
• M — Mute/Unmute stream preview audio
• F — Toggle Fullscreen for stream preview
• ? — Show all keyboard shortcuts

Log Files

When the dashboard indicates an issue, log files provide the detailed information needed for troubleshooting. StreamDev maintains several log files:

• logs/app.log: General application log — records stream start/stop events, configuration changes, and operational messages
• logs/error.log: Error-only log — records failures, exceptions, and critical issues that require attention
• logs/debug.log: Detailed debug log — records verbose information useful for diagnosing complex issues (may be large)
• ~/.pm2/logs/: Process manager logs — records process-level events including crashes, restarts, and memory usage

For most troubleshooting scenarios, start with error.log to identify the specific failure, then check app.log for context around when and why it occurred.